


We Got A Good Thing Here

by jujubiest



Series: SPN One-Shots [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 13:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2389364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hear him whisper sweetly in my ear: "Can't you see we got a good thing here?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Got A Good Thing Here

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 9x03; AU after 9x03.

Dean opens his eyes to the absolute darkness that comes from living underground, with no windows to let in sunlight. It’s something he’s slowly grown accustomed to over the last year.

There’s warmth at his back. That’s newer…something he’s still getting used to. But he likes it. He turns toward the source of that warmth, a sleepy smile spreading across his face.

“Mornin’,” he mumbles. Cas hums back, soft deep rumble of sound swallowed up by the dark. Dean shuffles closer, reaching out blindly, feeling around until one of his hands finds a t-shirt clad stomach, chest, shoulder.

They wrap themselves up in each other’s arms, less space and more warmth. Just how Dean likes it. He buries his face in Cas’s hair and breathes him in: deep inhale, exhale, repeat. Cas laughs into his neck.

“That tickles,” he reprimands, without any real irritation.

“I love that you’re ticklish,” Dean says.

“I don’t like that you’re not,” Cas retorts. Dean grins.

“Don’t be a sore loser, Cas.”

“I didn’t lose,” Cas insists stubbornly. “You have an unfair advantage.” They’ve had this conversation before, enough times that the words have no meaning anymore. It’s a call and response, something stupid and silly, an argument with no point and no resolution. It’s theirs, though.

Mornings, too.  Those are theirs. Mornings have become Dean’s favorite time of day, next to nights. These stolen moments of quiet, of closeness have begun to matter to him more and more lately. Ever since they went to rescue Cas from a rogue reaper named April, posing as a good Samaritan.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re holding me very…hard.”

“Oh.” Dean loosens his death grip a bit. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Cas tells him, not for the first time. Not for the last. “I’m here.”

“I know,” Dean says softly. “Will you stay?”

“I will.”

* * *

 

His mornings and nights aren’t the only thing that’s changed. Dean is different. The things that he thinks, and worries about, are different.

So many things that used to be so important to him…all these unarticulated ideas about who he is, and who he should be, and how that person would act; they just seem ridiculous to him now, and small. They’re far away, tucked away somewhere with his guilt, and his pride, and the worried looks his brother keeps throwing his way. Maybe Sam doesn’t understand. For once, Dean doesn’t need him to. He doesn’t feel any great pull toward arguing his point. Quite frankly, he has better things to do.

Like this: listening to Cas talk. He tells Dean about his lost brothers and sisters. Not their ranks, or their powers. Not their great deeds in the everlasting war against the armies of hell. Cas tells him what their names mean, and what they meant to him.

Dean learns that Anna was a great leader and teacher, Uriel a constant jester, and Balthazar a loyal friend. The picture Cas creates of them doesn’t quite match Dean’s memories, but he doesn’t contradict him. The things they did don’t matter anymore, not as much as the sound of Cas’s voice, quiet pride mingled with a sort of wistful sadness.

Dean tries to imagine them like human siblings: Uriel tagging along after Gabriel, trying to be like his trickster older brother. Lucifer, the rebellious teenager. Anna, feeling like she doesn’t quite fit in with her own family. And what was Cas in all of that? The mild, dutiful middle child, watching but never jumping in?

Sometimes Dean falls asleep to the sound of Cas’s voice, lulled by the soft vibrations of Cas’s chest against his ear and the soothing feeling of Cas’s hand running through his hair. Sometimes he dreams of the stories Cas tells him: shining creatures in a world of sound and light, working God’s will and their family issues out at the same time. Once, before he’s really awake, Dean asks him if Anna’s true form is really purple. Cas laughingly tells him no, if he had to pick a single color for her it would be red.

Eventually Dean has to get up and go about his day, of course. People still need saving and things still need hunting, no matter how much he’d like to just stay in bed forever, spend all his time listening to Cas talk about angels. But even when he’s out in the world, chasing down monsters and fighting for his life, he finds that more and more his mind drifts back to a darkened bedroom, cool sheets, and Cas.

* * *

They don’t talk about that day. Dean tries not to even think about it, actually. Cas was human, and alone. He needed them. And they were almost too late.

It’s hardest to forget the _sound_ of it—the splinter and crash of breaking in the door, followed by the sickening noise a blade makes sliding and sticking in a human body. Dean knows that sound, all too well. The first thing he ever did to Cas was stab him in the chest. The angel treated that wound with less concern than a pinprick. But the human…the worst sound of all was hearing the way Cas cried out, a sound of pure pain, wheezing off at the end. The sound of air being expelled from a punctured lung.

“I thought you were dead,” Dean murmurs one morning, words half-lost in Cas’s neck. He doesn’t want to bring it up, but he keeps dreaming about it. “I thought you were gone for good. By the time I got to you, you were just…and I thought _oh god_. I’m too late.”

“Shhh,” Cas says, running a hand over Dean’s hair. “I’m fine. I’m right here.”

“Yeah,” Dean sighs, slightly mollified. “You always find a way back, huh?”

“So it seems.”

“Well, you better.” Dean grouses. He feels Cas’s smile against his skin.

“Dean?” Their murmured conversation is interrupted by Sam’s voice coming through the door. Dean hears the knob turn, but as usual the door is locked.

“Hey,” Sam calls again, voice muffled. “There’s food if you want it.”

Dean scowls at the dark. Cas laughs quietly. “You do need food,” he points out.

“I need _you,”_ Dean says adamantly, curling in closer. He’s unwilling to let the morning end just yet.

“Hey…” Cas pulls away a little. Dean can feel his hands, warm and rough, on his shoulders. He wishes there could be a window. What would Cas look like in the blue and gray of early morning, all sleep-tousled and soft? He could turn on the light, of course…but it isn’t quite the same, so he doesn’t.

“Get food,” Cas says. “I’ll be right here.”

Grumbling, Dean nonetheless complies. He drags himself up out of the sleep-warm bed sheets, groping in the pitch black for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He hasn’t bothered cleaning up or doing laundry in a while. He probably should.

Dressed and more or less alert, Dean saunters out of his room and down the hall, following the unmistakable smell of bacon frying.

“Mmm,” Dean says appreciatively as he enters the bunker’s kitchen. “Smells good, Sammy!”

Sam half-turns his attention from the pan on the eye in front of him. His face looks drawn and tired, his expression concerned.

“Dean.” He sounds careful, tentative. “Feeling okay?”

“Okay?” Dean scoffs. “Man, I feel _great._ Where’s Kevin at?”

“Um…he’s kind of on the graveyard shift schedule lately. His breakfast is our dinner.” Sam seems oddly put off by Dean’s good mood. “You sure you’re okay? Do you wanna…I dunno, talk maybe?”

“Hell yeah,” Dean says. “I feel like a million bucks, whatever that feels like. S’nothing to talk about. Quit bein’ weird.”

“Okay…” Sam says, still sounding like he doesn’t quite believe him. “Well, come get some bacon. There’s toast in the oven, too.”

“Regular Susie Homemaker, my brother,” Dean says affectionately, ruffling Sam’s hair on his way to grab a plate. The usual indignant cry that would accompany desecration of the sacred hair is missing, which takes a little of the joy out of it…but Dean doesn’t mind. If Sam wants to get complacent in his old age, let him. Dean will just have to step up his hair sabotage game, is all. He grins a little wickedly down at the slice of toast he’s buttering.

He’s too busy enjoying his bacon to notice the way Sam watches him all through breakfast, face pinched into a worried frown.

* * *

 

“You know, one of these days we’re gonna have to do something that doesn’t involve rolling around in bed together,” Dean says playfully.

“We don’t roll around,” Cas objects, sounding confused. Dean laughs. He laughs often when he’s in bed with Cas, and easily.

“Well,” he says, “Maybe we should start.” And then he grabs Cas by both shoulders and rolls them so that Cas is on his back, with Dean leaning over him, arms planted on either side of Cas’s shoulders and one knee wedged between his thighs. He hears Cas’s breath catch in the dark.

“I concur,” he says gruffly. “There should be more rolling. But in no universe, Dean Winchester, do you get to be on top.”

“Wait, what—augh!”

Dean finds himself abruptly flipped around, head hitting the pillow, and now Cas is poised on top of him, face hovering so close to his that when he breathes in, it’s the air Cas just breathed out. As usual, Dean both loves and hates the darkness. He wishes he could see the expression on Cas’s face right now. But turning on the light would require upsetting this delicate position they find themselves in.

 _This could be easy, too_ , Dean thinks. As easy as the way Cas makes him laugh, or as easy as breathing. A turn of the head, a tilt of the chin. Easy as apple pie.

Cas must get impatient waiting for Dean to articulate to himself how easy it would all be, because there are lips on his. Soft, warm mouth pressed against his own, light but insistent. He presses back, and now he’s kissing Cas. Awkward and slow, like a timid first-timer, and Dean doesn’t _do_ hesitance in this department. Kissing is normally like instinct for him: he lets them lead, and he follows with enthusiasm.

But Cas doesn’t lead. He initiates, and then seems to freeze up a little. The lessons of the pizza man appear to be forgotten. So Dean decides it’s up to him to get them on track.

Hands, first, to hold them steady. Hands sliding up arms, pausing on shoulders. Hands slipping up to tilt Cas’s head just so.

Lips pressing, insistent…then pulling back. Smiling when Cas chases them down, finds them again with a disgruntled noise that can only mean _why did you stop?_ Answered with the flick of a tongue across the closed seam of Cas’s mouth. And suddenly the pizza man is remembered. _Now we’re in business._

They kiss themselves sore in the mouth and stiff with want, the inevitable mess of hands-clutched-in-hair, tangled-up-sheets, needy little noises that taper off into soft breathlessness as they finally pull away for the sake of self-preservation.

“Need…air,” Dean gasps.

“Need _you,_ ” Cas growls beside him, and they’re back at one another again, necking like teenagers, laughing like best friends, falling asleep finally, intertwined like lovers.

* * *

 

“Sam…can we talk?”

Sam looks up from one of the many—so far useless—tomes of information left by the Men of Letters. Kevin is standing there in sweats and a t-shirt that’s far too large for him now. Sam makes a mental note that they really need to get Kevin some new clothes…and maybe make sure he eats a little more regularly.

He sighs. He knows what Kevin wants to talk about.

“Listen, Kev…what Dean’s dealing with—“

“That’s just it,” Kevin interrupts. “He’s _not_ dealing with it. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he wasn’t even upset. But we both know he is. He _has_ to be.”

Sam closes the book.

“Look…I’ve seen him do this before. I’ve seen him drink himself to sleep and wake up shaking and sweating from nightmares. I’ve seen him so out of his head he could barely function, let alone hunt. This…it could be a lot worse than this, Kevin.”

“There’s something _worse_ than your best friend dying and you acting like nothing happened?”

Sam sucks in a breath, blows it out, runs a hand over his tired eyes and through his hair.

“I think…he’s expecting Cas to come back. We’ve seen him die and come back before, at least half a dozen times.”

“But Sam, Cas was _human._ Humans don’t just come back. Not usually anyway…not without someone to make them. And we’re not trying to make Cas come back. Dean hasn’t even cracked a book, he hasn’t even _asked—_ “

“He wouldn’t ask.” Sam cuts him off tersely. “If Dean thought there was a way, he’d just do it. He wouldn’t ask our opinion.”

“But wouldn’t he at least ask for our help?”

Sam has nothing to say to that, and it’s all beside the point really because Kevin’s right. The way Dean’s been acting since Castiel died…it scares him, if he’s honest. It’s like Dean is completely unaware that his best friend in the world was stabbed to death right in front of him.

Hell, Sam’s still having nightmares about it, nearly a month later. And Cas was important to him, but to Dean…Cas and Dean have always had this weird _thing_ with each other. Sam’s seen Dean lose people before. Most of the time, losing people spurs him to action. Brother dies? Sell your soul to get him back. Father dies? Kill the sonofabitch responsible. Bobby? Jo? Ellen? Go after the fuckers that did it with everything you’ve got.

But Cas? When Cas was gone, Dean just…shut down. Sam had never seen him so messed up, not even when he came back after forty years in Hell. He watched Dean drink himself to sleep every night for months, and wake up shaking and sweating every morning. Sam knew he was having nightmares about Cas; Dean would never admit it, but Sam heard him choke out Cas’s name just before startling himself awake more than once.

He was the same after Purgatory: bad dreams, shut up in his own head all the time when he was awake. Sam never knew what to do, or how to help. And eventually it didn’t matter, because both times Cas came back, and Dean got better. But this time…

Dean was just…frozen. Sam remembers coming to with a throbbing headache, seeing Dean knelt in front of the chair Cas was tied to, Cas’s face in his hands. He was calling Cas’s name, over and over. Cas’s eyes were closed, and when Dean let go of him and stepped back, his head flopped forward like he was some kind of grotesque ragdoll. He just…stood there, breathing like he’d run a marathon. By the time Sam managed to drag himself off the ground and go to him, Dean was gasping for air. Sam had never seen a panic attack, but he’s pretty sure Dean was having one. It took him a good ten minutes to calm Dean down, and he was half-afraid he would pass out the entire time.

And then…he went quiet. He helped Sam wrap Cas up and they gave him a hunter’s funeral—no way was Dean going to risk Cas being a vengeful spirit or worse, possessed. They stayed until the fire burned itself out, and then they went back to the bunker. Dean was silent for the entire car ride, and when they arrived he parked the car, went inside, and headed straight for his room. He locked the door behind him and didn’t come out or make a sound for two straight days.

And then suddenly, it was like it never happened. It would’ve been one thing if he’d just been stoic, or thrown himself into work, or even kept having panic attacks. That Sam would have understood. But he was…he was goddamn _bouncy._ He was practically grinning from ear to ear. He strutted around the bunker humming “Back in Black” and looking happier than Sam had ever seen him. It was terrifying, because it _made no sense._

Sam had tried to talk to him, once. But the more he tried, the less Dean took him seriously.

“Talk about what, Sammy? I feel _good._ I feel awesome.”

Sam isn’t sure what scares him more: the idea that Dean could actually be so callously unaffected by Cas’s death, or the notion that he’s slipped into some kind of deep stage of denial about the whole thing.

He keeps waiting for Dean to get better. For something to click…or break. He’s been poised on the edge of a knife since they walked away from Cas’s funeral pyre, ready for the moment when Dean falls completely apart. And nothing has happened.

Kevin’s right. He needs to talk to Dean about this. _Make_ him talk about it. Or at least figure out where his head is on the subject.

He stands, stretching slowly. He feels his back crack in several places as it unfolds from its hunched-over reading position, and grimaces. Then slowly, reluctantly, he makes his way out of the library and down the hall toward Dean’s room.

When he reaches the door he hesitates. He knows it will be locked; Dean has been locking himself in every night since Cas died, despite Sam’s protests and much to his constant anxiety. He raises his hand to knock, and then freezes when he hears Dean’s voice, soft and sounding strangely affectionate, drifting out.

* * *

 

“One of these days I’m gonna figure out how to get a TV to work in this room,” Dean says, threading his fingers through Cas’s under the covers. “And then you and I have some serious cultural education to take care of.”

“I enjoy television,” Cas says agreeably.

“I used to watch movies a lot when I was a kid. When my dad would go off for days at a time, and leave me to watch Sammy…after the striga I was afraid to stop watchin’ him, not even to sleep. So I used to have a movie playing on the motel room TV, whatever was free. Mostly a lotta old sci-fi and horror movies. I saw _A Nightmare on Elm Street_ so many times I could quote it.”

“What was your favorite?”

Dean thinks for a moment, running his thumb absently over the back of Cas’s hand.

“Maybe _Return of the Jedi,_ ” he says finally. “Or there was this one called _Legend._ It was…weird. There was a princess, and Tom Cruise played this creepy feral kid or somethin’. And this fairy chick kept trying to get in his pants, but he loved the princess. Only she was kidnapped by the Devil.”

“Lucifer was free in this story?”

“Kinda,” Dean chuckles. “He wasn’t really Lucifer, though. He was this big, creepy-looking red thing. Pretty sure Tim Curry was in there somewhere. He scared the crap outta Sam…he would whine so bad if I turned that on while he was still awake.”

“I would like to see your movies,” Cas says. Dean smiles.

“Awesome,” he says.

* * *

 

Sam backs away from the door, not wanting to hear anymore. His brain feels numb, unable or unwilling to put two and two together and come up with the answer to Dean’s behavior over the last few weeks. He doesn’t want to believe it.

He makes his way back to the library and collapses in a chair. Research. He needs to do some research. They have things to hunt down and kill.

“Sam?”

Kevin is there. Sam didn’t hear him come in. Maybe he was already there; Sam isn’t sure he would have noticed in his current state.

“I went to talk to Dean,” he says.

“Oh.” Kevin hesitates. “So…how’d it go?”

Sam looks up, expression twisted and eyes pained.

“I…I didn’t go in. But…I heard him, Kevin.”

“What you mean you _heard_ him?”

“Dean. He was locked in his room, like usual. And I heard him. He was…talking.”

“Talking? Like, on the phone?”

Sam shakes his head.

“He was talking to himself.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Don't talk to me of death do us part. Between us we share a beating heart. Candles flicker in the chandelier. Can't you see we got a good thing here?"  
> \- "Ghost Story," by Charming Disaster.
> 
> The inspiration for this one-shot, as well as its title, summary, and the above quote are taken from this song, which was featured in Episode 50 of Welcome to Night Vale.


End file.
